Cabins In The Laurel by Muriel Earley Sheppard

Cabins in the Laurel is a record of Mountain life in Western North Carolina during and before the 1930's. The area has changed in this past 40 years; only small pockets of the old simple life remain but what there is is worth knowing about. A t first you might take it for Americana or funk, but you soon see that the people are really far out. There is a ballad in there sung by a woman named Frankie Silvers. The song is her answer to her executioner's question: "Do you have any last words?" There is a portrayal of an ecstatic scene inside a Holiness church wherein a woman becomes a saint by dancing and wailing until the congregation joins her. These are true stories.